I have a question.. I am brewing a honey oatmeal stout tonight. I gave my worth the ice bath and all,, cooled it to about 90 and added it to the other 2.5 gallons of cold water. The thing is, its been almost an hour now and it wont drop below 84 degrees.. should I pitch the yeast early and cover it, or should I continue to keep it exposed to the air and wait until its below the 75-80 mark?

With a wort chiller you can get the temperature down pretty reasonably depending on the temperature of the water you are feeding it. There isn't much need to cool the wort below the ambient temperature of the room you plan to ferment in though...

I bought 20ft of 3/8" copper and use it with a cheap aquarium pump which pumps ice water through the chiller. With this I can chill a full 5 gallon boil to room temp in 20 minutes or so. This will only cost you about $50. Last brew I saw my first good cold break, makes you really appreciate why you want to cool quickly.

In my opinion, wort chillers that run water from the faucet that dump to the drain are a waste of water, and dont chill it down any better than other methods. The one above works great and doesnt use much water. I just put my brew pot in the sink with a bag of ice, cold water, and salt. The Salt lets the water get colder than it would by itself. I can cool down from 210 deg to 90 or so in 15 min. My tap water is pretty cold, so when I mix my final 3 gal to the 90 deg wort I have a perfect 65-70 temp.

In my opinion, wort chillers that run water from the faucet that dump to the drain are a waste of water, and dont chill it down any better than other methods. The one above works great and doesnt use much water. I just put my brew pot in the sink with a bag of ice, cold water, and salt. The Salt lets the water get colder than it would by itself. I can cool down from 210 deg to 90 or so in 15 min. My tap water is pretty cold, so when I mix my final 3 gal to the 90 deg wort I have a perfect 65-70 temp.

This is fine for smaller boils, but you will never get 5 gallons to cool quickly enough using your method. Some type of chiller is necassary.

Are you putting your top off water in the fridge prior to adding? I put mine in the fridge over-night, then two hours before brew time I put them in the freezer. I took mine from 90 to around 65 just by adding the water.